A Camera Engine for Computer Games: Managing the Trade-Off Between Constraint Satisfaction and Frame Coherence

Abstract

Many computer games treat the user in the "1st person" and bind the camera to his or her view. More sophistication in a game can be achieved by enabling the camera to leave the users' viewpoint. This, however, requires new methods for automatic, dynamic camera control. In this paper we present methods and tools for such camera control. We emphasize guiding camera control by constraints; however, optimal constraint satisfaction tends to lead to the camera jumping around too much. Thus, we pay particular attention to a trade-off between constraint satisfaction and frame coherence. We present a new algorithm for dynamic consideration of the visibility of objects which are deemed to be important in a given game context.